‘A nappy?’ Daisy tried again. It was clear she had been thinking about this for some time.
‘Kittens don’t wear nappies,’ Henry said in disgust as he bounced on one of the bunks. ‘God, this is a bit hard!’
‘Don’t swear, Henry,’ Keely admonished absently.
‘I wasn’t. I could run round all the lavs and pinch loads and loads of toilet paper and she could go on that!’ he suggested enthusiastically.
‘Let’s not worry about it now, shall we?’ Bonnie said. ‘I’d like to have a look around.’
So they all went exploring. The ship was quite large, with four passenger decks. As well as the other girls from the American Kiwi Club in Auckland there were another seventy war brides who had already boarded in Wellington, plus roughly a hundred young English evacuees on their way home, and a few dozen US military personnel — mostly men but a few navy and army nurses who’d stayed on at the American hospitals in the Auckland area until their patients were fit enough to be shipped home.
They’d been right round the entire ship and arrived back at the girls’ cabin when the announcement came over the Tannoy that all visitors must leave the ship, as she would be sailing in thirty minutes.
Keely, who had been putting on a very brave face, burst into tears, followed closely by Bonnie and Leila, and then Daisy. Henry hung on for as long as he could, but finally succumbed as well. They all lingered on deck near the gangway, then it was time for Keely, Owen and Henry to go.
They hugged each other ferociously amid promises to keep in touch regularly by letter and telegram, and pleas from Keely and Owen to for God’s sake come home if it didn’t all work out.
When all non-passengers had left the ship and the gangway was raised, Bonnie, Leila and Daisy hung over the bulwark waving furiously as the Robert E. Lee began to shudder away from the dock. As the people left behind on the wharf grew too small to see clearly, they held hands and cried and cried.
England
At exactly the same time as Bonnie and Leila were saying goodbye in New Zealand, a girl was leaning over the rail of an English ship docked at Southampton, waving goodbye to her own mother and father.
Beside her was a little boy almost five years old, with dark hair and skin, and brown eyes as big and as lively as his father’s had been. But at the moment they were filled with tears, because he didn’t know if he would ever see Granny and Pop again. His name was Sam, and although he had never known his father, his mum told him all the time that he looked exactly like him. They were on their way to visit his dad’s family in New Zealand, and it was supposed to be a secret. From whom, Sam couldn’t quite work out, because he knew, and his mum knew, and so did his grandparents, so the only ones left who didn’t know must be the people in New Zealand. He’d asked Mum lots of times why it had to be a secret, but all she would say was that it was meant to be a surprise. He knew about surprises, but he wasn’t at all sure now about secrets.
Violet had been thinking for a very long time about going to New Zealand to seek out Billy’s parents. She wanted nothing at all from them, because she had everything she needed in Dogmersfield, but she did want them to meet Sam. He was their grandson after all, and if they were half as decent as Billy had said they were, then she certainly wanted Sam to meet them.
When Harry Tomoana had written after the Battle of Crete and told her that Billy had been killed, she’d known for three months that she was expecting his baby. The shock of learning about his death — especially after she’d worked so hard to convince herself that he would come back for her just as he’d promised — was awful, and she had ended up in such a state she’d almost miscarried. But Sam had arrived later that year in August — big, healthy and unmistakably brown-skinned. At first she’d been shunned by some of the villagers, then their censure had turned to curiosity as she’d begun to take Sam out in his pram, and finally he’d been accepted into the small community as just one of those things that happened in wartime. He was a lovely, contented baby and, as he grew, a bright, inquisitive and perpetually happy toddler, and in a way he’d come to embody the sense of fun and exuberance that the Maori lads from New Zealand had brought to the village during their time there in 1940.
As a single woman Violet had been manpowered into war work, despite having a child to look after, so she had left Sam in the loving and very capable care of her parents and gone to work in a munitions factory in Guildford, coming home whenever she could to be with her son. But that was all over and done with now and she’d had plenty of time to consider what would be best for Sam. He was an English child, there was no doubt about that, but he also had another heritage, and Billy had spoken so passionately, if briefly, about that side of his own life that Violet believed Sam had a right to at least know about it first hand, if not to live it. So she’d talked it over for months with her parents, and finally decided that she would take Sam to New Zealand, just for a visit.
Her mother and father had been very understanding about it all, as they had been about her pregnancy, to her surprise and relief. They had provided the money for her and Sam’s return fare, which she would never have been able to cobble together herself. She’d promised to repay them as soon as she could, as she knew the money had come from their retirement fund, and she meant it, even if she had to work six days a week in the bakery for the rest of her life.
And now the day had come for them to leave. Poor little Sam couldn’t understand that they would be coming back, and she felt for him as tears trickled down his cheeks, even though he was trying hard to be really brave. She picked him up and held him high so he had a better view of his grandparents, waving energetically back at him from the dock and putting on brave faces themselves. She had taken photos of them so Sam could look at them whenever he was feeling homesick, and kept them in her purse next to the only picture she had of Billy — the one they’d had taken together by Dogmersfield’s one and only photographer, which was now creased and dog-eared because she’d looked at it so often.
He’d been a lovely man, Billy Deane, and the only one she’d ever loved, and she still mourned him deeply. It seemed so unfair that they’d only had a few months together, but at least she’d been left with something of him, a child who was so precious to her that she sometimes wondered how she would have survived without him. Other women regretted the moments of passion that had transformed them from carefree young girls to mothers in the wink of an eye, but she never had. Because as long as she had Sam, she would also have Billy, and some days she even managed to tell herself it was almost enough.
Two hours after the Robert E. Lee had steamed out through Waitemata Harbour and into the Hauraki Gulf, and the girls had gone below because the wind on deck was giving Daisy an earache, a knock came at the door of cabin 46. On opening it, Bonnie was confronted with First Purser Woolley, standing next to a trolley on which were stacked an assortment of sand-filled boxes.
‘Will you be requiring a sand-box in this cabin?’ he asked impassively.
‘I’m sorry?’ Bonnie knew her face had flushed scarlet.
‘A sand-box, for the disposal of cigarettes. It is a safety measure.’
‘Oh! Yes, of course! Four of us do smoke. How thoughtful!’
‘Indeed,’ The first purser said, his eyes straying over to Daisy’s bunk where she sat blinking her huge eyes ingenuously and holding the cover down over a wriggling Ginny. ‘And perhaps you might require a second box for, oh, I don’t know, whatever hitherto unplanned-for contingencies may arise during the voyage?’
‘Er, yes, thanks, that would be very helpful.’
First Purser Woolley gravely handed Bonnie two sand-boxes. As he turned to go, Daisy bellowed, ‘Ta, Woolley!’ making everyone in the cabin laugh.
As the door closed Bonnie crossed to her bunk. ‘That was close,’ she said, sinking onto it. ‘Thanks, girls, for not letting on.’
The twins were sharing with Sally and Marjorie, and another girl named Gail Spano, whom they had also met at the Amer
ican Kiwi Club, and had not liked very much. Gail’s husband, like Sally’s, was Italian, and she was headed for New York and then, according to her, Hollywood. She was certainly an attractive woman, and her baby was gorgeous too, a dear wee eighteen-month-old with black hair and cornflower-blue eyes that matched her mother’s, and the most adorable little nose and rosebud lips in a pink-cheeked face.
But Gail was what the twins — and Marjorie and Sally — considered to be rather fast. Bonnie and Leila were worldly enough themselves, and were happy enough to admit it, but they liked to think they were worldly in a sophisticated and (usually) tasteful sort of way. They drank, they smoked — but then who didn’t these days? — they wore make-up and fashionable clothes and were usually first onto the dance floor and last off. And God knew they weren’t innocent, but they didn’t believe they advertised the fact as Gail Spano did.
Bonnie had announced ages ago that they shouldn’t judge how other people chose to behave, especially given that Daisy’s date of birth was always going to be six months after the date on her parents’ marriage certificate, but Gail had a way about her that did invite, if not comment, then at least speculation. Her clothes were flashy and she wore so much jewellery that she clattered whenever she moved. She certainly turned heads — especially men’s — with her bright outfits and her undeniably spectacular figure, but did not seem to have very many female friends. She had a good sense of humour and was obviously intelligent but, in Leila’s opinion, her bad language and predatory attitude towards men alienated other women.
Unfortunately, because they were all sharing a cabin, they would be seeing a lot of Gail, but it couldn’t be helped, and any way she wasn’t that bad, just abrasive. And her little girl Jennifer (named after the film star Jennifer Jones) was absolutely lovely. There were five women and three children in the cabin, and Bonnie hoped that the weather would be fine most of the way, as she didn’t fancy being cooped up with them all for weeks. The ship would be stopping off at Pago Pago in American Samoa, but no one knew yet whether they could go ashore. They would sail on from there through the Panama Canal and the Caribbean, then up to New York along the US eastern seaboard, where the American-bound passengers would disembark and the English evacuees would continue on across the North Atlantic to Britain.
If any of the war brides travelling on the Robert E. Lee had harboured hopes of having a high old time on the voyage to their new homes, most of them soon discovered they’d been sadly mistaken. The rules were very strict, with clear and frequently repeated instructions regarding where on the ship the women were and were not allowed to go. According to the general consensus, this discipline was for their own protection because the ship was crewed by sex-starved men. Members of the American Red Cross were on board too, with daily programmes for the women including lessons on how to knit and sew and cook — as if most New Zealand women did not have these skills already — and yet more lectures about life in America. But they also ran a nursery for the children, which gave mothers a very welcome break. Leila was particularly grateful. Daisy was one of the oldest children on the ship, inquisitive, energetic and easily bored, and by the time she had been around the deck with her a dozen times over the first two days, she was more than ready to hand her over to the kind and enthusiastic care of the Red Cross women for an hour or so.
Many of the children were only babies, however, or toddlers. Disposable nappies were preferred, since washing and drying cloth nappies on board was impractical, and by the end of the third day the captain had had to issue an edict stating that disposable nappies were not to be tossed overboard as they were forming a trail all the way back to New Zealand.
Seasickness struck, but most passengers had found their sea legs by the fourth day, and that was when boredom began to set in. One evening, after dinner, it was discovered that Gail had left Jennifer in the cabin by herself and gone off. When the others had returned from the dining room, they found the toddler tied by one chubby wrist to her bunk, screaming herself blue in the face and wearing a reeking nappy and the grubby clothes she’d been in all day.
Marjorie rushed over immediately, untied the little girl and picked her up, crooning and rocking quietly until her shrieks had subsided to irregular, hiccupping sobs.
‘God, she pongs,’ Marjorie said, pulling a face. ‘Pass me a nappy, will you, Leila?’
By the time she had been cleaned up, changed and dressed in fresh clothes, Jennifer had recovered somewhat. She could only speak a few words, and one of these was ‘Mummy’. She kept intoning this over and over until the other women thought their hearts might break.
‘Where the hell is she?’ Sally asked angrily. ‘Was she at dinner, did anyone see?’
Nobody had, and the hunt began.
While Leila stayed in the cabin to look after the children, Sally and Marjorie began a thorough search of every part of the ship in which they thought Gail might be holed up — except for the prohibited crew’s quarters, although they both agreed that flat on her back on some sailor’s bunk was the most likely place for her to be.
Bonnie went up on deck and prowled around in all the dark corners, peering behind the huge funnels and beneath badly lit stairwells. It really wasn’t on, she thought angrily, leaving your baby to scream her head off alone while you were out gallivanting about, not on at all. Of course, they might all be seriously mistaken and find that Gail had been unavoidably detained in the toilet for the last three hours because of a dodgy stomach, or something similarly unfortunate, but she doubted it.
She especially doubted it as she spied one of Gail’s high-heeled shoes dangling over the side of a lifeboat. The shoe had a foot in it, attached to a slim leg which disappeared under a tarpaulin loosely covering the boat. The boat itself was swinging slightly on its thick chains, as whoever was in it moved rhythmically up and down. Or perhaps it was from side to side; Bonnie couldn’t tell from where she was standing. She felt like giving the heaving hump under the tarpaulin a good kick, but instead she turned on her heel and went straight back to the cabin.
When Gail finally put in an appearance several hours later, everyone else was in bed, although the lights in the cabin were still on. Jennifer was tucked up in her own bunk, fast asleep and surrounded by the other children’s toys to keep her company.
Sally snapped, ‘Enjoy your night out, did you?’
Gail sat down and lit a cigarette. ‘I did, actually.’
‘Seaman or an officer?’
‘Oh, an officer. I always aim high.’
Bonnie snorted in disgust. ‘We don’t care what you get up to, but how could you leave Jennifer on her own like that?’
Gail shrugged. ‘Easily. I don’t really give a bugger.’
The others looked on, stunned and speechless.
‘Well, it’s true! She was an accident, a mistake, but her father was stupid enough to marry me so I’m entitled to American citizenship now, and that means I can work in Hollywood.’
‘What as?’ Bonnie retorted, but Gail ignored her.
Leila finally found her tongue. ‘But what about Jennifer? What will happen to her, the poor little thing?’
‘Poor little Jennifer will be going to her father. He dotes on her. Sends her a letter every week without fail, toys, clothes, you name it. So don’t worry, she’ll be okay. And let’s face it, girls, she’ll be far better off with him than she ever would be with me,’ Gail added with unexpected frankness. ‘I just wasn’t cut out for motherhood.’
This was so patently obvious that no one bothered to refute her.
‘Has anyone ever told you you’re a cold, calculating bitch?’ Marjorie asked.
‘Several times, but at least I’m an honest one.’
Leila asked indignantly, ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, look at you lot, for a start. You’ve all married your American Prince Charmings after five-minute whirlwind romances, and in exchange for sex and a marriage certificate you’re now off to the promised land for a life of
mod cons and big cars and lovely palatial homes. What’s that if not dishonest? At least I’m straight up about what I do.’
There was a collective gasp of outrage.
‘You nasty, mean-spirited cow!’ Leila spat. She climbed out of her bunk and sat down beside Daisy, who was awake now and beginning to whimper at the mounting tension. ‘I married Jake because I love him. His family owning land has nothing to do with it at all.’
‘Are you sure about that, sweetheart? Where did you say he comes from? Oklahoma? There aren’t too many nice big prosperous farms out that way, I can assure you, so I sincerely hope in your case that love can conquer all.’
‘How the hell would you know what’s in Oklahoma?’
‘Because I talk to people, a lot, and I listen, and if there’s one time a man’s going to tell you the truth, girl, it’s right after you’ve just given him a great time. The streets of America aren’t paved with gold, unless you make it yourself. And just about none of those boys who came over to New Zealand had any of that gold, because if they did, they would have used it to buy themselves out of the military.’
‘Look, Gail,’ Sally said, getting angrily out of bed herself, ‘what exactly are you trying to say?’
‘I’m saying that you’re having yourselves on if you think everything’s going to be rosy when you get to wherever it is you’re all going. How long did you know these husbands of yours before you married them? How much of what they told you do you really think was the truth, eh? You know, when they were swanning about all over Auckland in their smart uniforms with bags of money and hero written across their foreheads in capital letters, but deep down terrified about where they were heading next and wanting nothing more than a good time with a pretty girl? You don’t think they might just have said things to you that weren’t quite true?’
‘So what?’ Marjorie shot back. ‘I’m not interested in money. Or property.’
‘You will be when you find out he expects you to live in a disgusting little basement room in some slum somewhere.’
Blue Smoke Page 34
